Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500.

If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the government pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you'd have $892,919.98.

If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.

The folks in Washington have pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madhoff ever did!

I paid cash for my social security insurance! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!

Congressional benefits: free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days, now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement entitlements? In the past months we have provided aid to Haiti , Chile , and Turkey . And now Pakistan ...home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!! Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income' receive no aid nor do they get any breaks while our government and religious organizations pour Hundreds of Billions of $'s and Tons of Food to Foreign Countries! They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives and now when it's time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place? Imagine if the GOVERNMENT gave 'US' the same support they give to other countries. Awfully damn sad isn't it?

Well gee, this is an easy one to solve. Just eat right, exercise, be safe, and sprinkle in a bit of lucky genetics, and you too can hopefully live to collect all that senior care you're demanding!

I'm reminded of the parable of the prodigal son. Two sons had an inheritance from their father, but one demanded all of it immediately while the other worked responsibly. Then the first son went and wasted it all, and he had to come crawling back home in the end. That's not the whole point of the story, but which son does this e-mail sound like to you?

This is a mish-mash of stuff, some of it true, some of it either not true or inaccurate.

1. Firstly, who gets your Soc Sec after you die? Well that depends. If you have a living spouse, they will continue to collect the higher amount of Soc Sec - either theirs or their spouse's. Or if you have dependent children - either adult or young - they will get your Soc Sec. Otherwise, the money you contributed stays in the collective pot. Oh well. That's the way it works. Why doesn't this email, you know, actually *explain* how Soc Sec works, if the person who wrote it is so "concerned" about this issue??

2. I'm pretty sure that the math at the beginning is highly inaccurate. Your employer doesn't contribute to Soc Sec, although they might contribute to a state or other govt pension. If you get your annual Soc Sec statements, it will tell how much you have contributed so far. I've been contributing for a long time & make more than $30k per year. Believe me, I haven't contributed as much as this RWF indicates. So they make it sound like you're in for a big rip off of your contribution, but that's probably not the case.

3. There's various stories about whether the govt has "borrowed" from Soc Sec or not to pay for other stuff. Rightwingers should get more involved in questioning this, but not to the point of demanding that the Fed Govt just go away, which is stupid.

4. Then this winds down into a typical rightwing rant about giving away our money to foreign countries. Well, ok, there's some validity to that complaint, but much of that aid is given to maintain our nation's (at this time) super-power dominance world-wide, which most conservatives profess to want. I lived in Australia for quite some time, and believe me, when a nation is not a super-power, there is definitely more money available to be spent domestically. However, conservatives nowadays think that spending money on the "commons" is somehow tantamount to socialism or communism, so... go figure.

5. Duly noted that this diatribe focuses conservative anger at how these white supremacists are being forced - the horror! - to inadvertently "give" money to dusky-hued strangers in weird foreign countries (no doubt teh dreaded Moozlinz, no less!). Yet nary a word is mentioned about all of the tax breaks, tax incentives & lack of taxation on US corporations, esp the extraction industries, get in order to have the privilege of extracting US natural resources, which they then turn around and sell for gargantuan profits domestically and overseas. THAT is a huge drain on our national budget that conservatives never seem to "get."

6. And then, of course, where is the conservative "outrage" about ongoing, spurious & costly WAR, Inc of aggression against everyone and anyone and the egregiously padded and giant Pentagon budget?? These foolish wingtards never ever seem to complain about that, do they?

Typical ignorant b.s. interspersed with a few questions that should be asked. But a garbled mess.

They think seniors are stupid and easily manipulated.Some are. Most are not.

Which shows just how stupid the GOP is. They're chasing a dwindling demographic.

Couple that with their teabagger/John Birch Society extremist wing, the religious zealot wing, and the richest 1% and that is why they have a hard time winning elections. The rest of us outnumber them, and always will.

Hence, their desperate attempts at voter suppression. They know a good turnout favors Democrats. Always.

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